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On my map: Milan / Athens (parte I)

20:19

Since I remember being a person I have this dream about traveling to some historic country/cities, like Rome, Athens and Cairo.

Rome I had the pleasure to go there about one year ago, and now I just check Athens from my list.
I love to travel but, at the same time, I don't like to spend money, so I'm only looking for the best deal oneasyJetandraynair.
So far, the prices of easyJet had been more cheap, however the company doesn't have plenty of destination from Lisbon. With some luck, you might find good deal booking transition flight from Milan for example. And this was exactly what I did! However this was not my cheapest trip but worth it. Well, always worth to travel right?

I started my trip in Lisbon to Milan, and I spent the night at the airport because the time during the connection flight was too short for me to go to some hotel and sleep, so I stayed there. I got my flight to Athens really early on the next morning.

(night spent at the airport)

I landed in Athens around mid-day and I had time to go to my hotel bedroom, refresh myself and take a short walk to the center of the city.

For the first time, I didn't had my favourite guide-map book, from Estampa Editor and I felt a huge difference on sightseeing. Apparently my favourite books are sold out and new editions are not scheduled. To bad. I really like it, because they divide the city by areas and each one has a pull-off map. And they are cheap!
So I had another book and I also download TripAdvisor app of Athens for a complete package. Either way I felt I was missing something.

In 4 days I managed to see the most important places, visited one island, Aegina - will talk about her later. Visited all important museums, the forum, acropolis, the surrounded hills, Socrates prison and I also climb the Lycabetus hill by my own foot, almost having to give up until I spotted this amazing guns and roses graffiti. On the minute I saw this, I just recovered more strength for the rest of the climbing!

Yes, I'm GN'R fan since teenager!

So if you organized very well your trip, you may reserved 4 days for Athens and its many sites and reserved another 2 days for island sightseeing.

Well lets get back to my trip. Once I was outside my hotel, I went for the historic centre. As I like to walk by foot, I always get to see things that you can not found on your guide-maps...Athens is simply huge! The historic centre is relative small comparing to the all city and you get this picture once you are on the top of Acropolis. Its Huge!But Athens did not turn me down! It was exactly I always imagined.

Gastronomically, Athens has a lot of influences of Turkey, because of Turkish domain during centuries.The food is mainly fish, shellfish, dry fruits and by the way, they have this amazing sauce based on yogurt and cucumber. Yummy!

Some of greek specialities are grilled octopus, lamb stick with fried chips and bread with olive oil and oregon.I was lucky enough to have the chef of the restaurant I went everyday for dinner cooking me calamares specially for me. How do you do not feel welcome? The staff of the restaurant was very friendly and this place you can not find on tripadvisor and is located on one of the sized streets near the central station. They were very friendly and the food was good and very cheap, every day I spent less than 6 euros. And each plate was big!

Calamares

On this trip, I decided not to restrained myself about food, the money spent and I even took time off during walks, like on one of the days I just seated in a bar with a privileged view over Acropolis and drunk a greek beer.

Time off with Acropolis view on the background

The city is beautiful and has some particularities...
- Is not often you see a motorcycle driver with helmet. Its scary!
- Almost every street has street food vendors with greek food.- They use dry fruit in almost everything

- Every single dog on the street has identification, even stray dogs.
- Athens has lots of turtles walking around the gardens of monuments!
- Each bottle of water only cost 50cents...

Greek specialty

Meanwhile I leave you some tips:
- Buy your ticket for Acropolis and use that ticket to enter for free in another sites like Agora, Forum, etc.
- UsedSightseeing bus to get to other places.- Don't go easy on street sale guys that will want to give you a bracelet... scam!- Don't drive in Athens... They are crazy drivers.- Don't walk along in the harbour. To many guys with stolen products trying to sell you an iphone or ipad.

I would like to remember than Greece is in crisis. The prices of the trips are affordable and the cost of living in Athens is extremely low, so visiting Athens is cheap. Beside that is gorgeous.Having the chance to see all that monuments than lean on my imagination was amazing, acropolis, roman forum, Athens temple... just wonder!